Friends and colleagues expressed shock yesterday that Bruce E. Ivins - an award-winning scientist who played guitar in his church folk group - would kill himself after being targeted in a federal anthrax probe, even as a contrasting portrait emerged of a man who in his final months spiraled into depression and bizarre behavior.
Ivins, who was 62 when he took a fatal dose of Tylenol and codeine Tuesday, had been released from a psychiatric unit last week at Frederick Memorial Hospital. Two weeks earlier, according to court records, he had made "threats of homicidal intent" against a Frederick social worker, who sought and won a protective order against him as federal investigators were closing in.
It was a stunning fall and tragic denouement for a man who had been at the peak of his profession, admired by friends and respected by colleagues. Ivins was considered one of the leading experts on anthrax research and, after the anthrax attacks that killed five people in the fall of 2001, he was called on by the government to assist in the investigation.
Friends and neighbors said he was an avid gardener, an active walker and a volunteer with the Red Cross. Ivins and his wife of 33 years, Diane, had 24-year-old twins, whom they raised in a modest white house with red shutters across the street from Fort Detrick in Frederick, where Ivins worked at the U.S. Army's institute for infectious diseases.
"Anybody that knew Bruce through his church affiliation is just dumbfounded," said Bill McCormick, who attended St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church in Frederick with Ivins for 25 years. He said Ivins was a "quiet, giving kind of guy," and the news that he was about to be charged in the attacks did not fit with the Ivins he knew.
But the Ivins home had been under federal surveillance for the past year, according to a neighbor who saw agents parked outside. Ivins had been cooperating with investigators and answering questions, colleagues said. He was being treated for depression.
"The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people," Ivins' lawyer, Paul F. Kemp, said in a statement. "In Dr. Ivins' case, it led to his untimely death."
Kemp asserted Ivins' innocence and described him as a "world-renowned and highly decorated scientist who served his country for over 33 years" as a civilian microbiologist for the Army.
